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WIP - My First Attempt

Hi all,

I joined yesterday so thought I'd jump right in and have a go myself. I was looking through some old fantasy books last night for some inspiration and this sketch fell out, I must have drawn it about 15 years ago and forgotten about it. I thought it would be a cool place to start.... with a LOT of improvement. I am really new to all this so will appreciate any help and advice you guys can offer as I go. I'm trying to create a world for the wargaming fantasy miniature company I am in the process of starting up.

I was looking through some of the sticky tutorials on here last night and I can see my rivers are pretty awful and go against many of the pointers in the threads, so will need to sort that out. I'm sure there are a lot more mistakes in there too, so please point them out.

I apologise for the unimaginative sea names, they will also be going

I'm going to be using Photoshop to create this map. I'm not that experienced at using the software, so I've just scanned it in as a jpeg at 600DPI so I can trace over it. Does that sound right or are there better ways to scan images in?

Anyway, I've got a day off today so will post some more WIP pics later this evening.... hopefully.

The first impression of your map is great; one concern about the names, though:
"Ustria" is similar to "Lustria", and "Cadia" well ... is "Cadia"; "Lustria" as well as "Cadia" are names from a certain gaming company known to threaten others in a very agressive way for far less.
So unless you are working for them (which I doubt), well ... just watch out ...

lol yeah I agree with all of that, I think at the time I was trying to make a map for some campaign for my army, from that gaming company or something like that but never did anything with it. I'll delete them now in PS and try and come up with a better name for the world.

Are there any tips for coming up with realistic sounding fantasy worlds? There are some great ones on here.

lol yeah I agree with all of that, I think at the time I was trying to make a map for some campaign for my army, from that gaming company or something like that but never did anything with it. I'll delete them now in PS and try and come up with a better name for the world.

Are there any tips for coming up with realistic sounding fantasy worlds? There are some great ones on here.

Cheers

Wil

In fact, there are:

A nice trick is to look around while mapping and taking the names of stuff from things lying around you and playing with those names unless they fit.
E.g. a manual about SQL became the patron for the elvish forest of Aes'Qulia.

Other tricks are using online translators translating words into "weird" languages such as Latin or even Sanskrit.
Btw: Looking around in German landscapes, there are a lot of "Fantasy" names as well: Schwarzwald, Vogtland, Elbmarsch. Not sure about names in other countries, though ...

Right I'm struggling so here is a little update to show where I've got to.

I though I'd try and use some grunge textures for the background. But I've been watching loads of videos on youtube and I think I've started to confuse myself with all the different techniques etc. so thought I'd ask for some comments from you guys. I'm only working on the bottom left hand corner of the image I posted yesterday, just so I can practice.

I used a small soft round brush 3px 0% hardness to trace around the original drawing. I've got a problem where the land colour seems to go past the black line into the area of the sea. I'm not sure if this is because I'm using too soft a brush maybe?

Here is my layering so far. I've put each texture on its own layer, then the coastline and block colours on its own layer too. I've adjusted the opacity of each layer to get this result.

A nice trick is to look around while mapping and taking the names of stuff from things lying around you and playing with those names unless they fit.
E.g. a manual about SQL became the patron for the elvish forest of Aes'Qulia.

Other tricks are using online translators translating words into "weird" languages such as Latin or even Sanskrit.
Btw: Looking around in German landscapes, there are a lot of "Fantasy" names as well: Schwarzwald, Vogtland, Elbmarsch. Not sure about names in other countries, though ...

Kind regards,
Kai

Along the same lines, the Spanish word for shoe (zapato) became the name of a country (Jhaipat) on a friend's map. We referred to it as 'shoe-land'.

Sorry for the double post, but have been wrestling with rhumbs all evening, so just wanted to post the latest WIP. I found a template made by Gidde in the 'how to' section so have used his. Thanks Gidde!